But Kipping singled out the cook and berated him with a stream of
disgusting oaths.
"You crawling black nigger, you," he yelled. "Now what'll _you_ give _me_
for a piece of pie?"
Holding the cleaver close at his side, the negro looked up at the fox who
was abusing him, and burst into wild vituperation. Although Kipping only
laughed in reply, there was a savage and intense vindictiveness in the
negro's impassioned jargon that chilled my blood. I remember thinking then
that I should dread being in Kipping's shoes if ever those two met again.
As we cast off, we six in that little boat soon to be left alone in the
wastes of the China Sea, we looked up at the cold, laughing faces on which
the low sun shone with an orange-yellow light, and saw in them neither pity
nor mercy. The hands resting on the bulwark, the hands of our own
shipmates, were turned against us.
The ship was coming back to her course now, and some of us were looking at
the distant island with the cone-shaped peaks, toward which by common
consent we had turned our bow, when the cook, who still stared back at
Kipping, seemed to get a new view of his features. Springing up suddenly,
he yelled in a great voice that must have carried far across the sea:--
"You Kipping, Ah got you--Ah got you--Ah knows who you is--Ah knows who you
is--you crimp's runner, you! You blood-money sucker, you! Ah seen you in
Boston! Ah seen you befo' now! A-a-a-ah!--a-a-a-ah!" And he shook his great
black fist at the mate.
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